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With or without Church support, women answer call to the cloth
By MEGAN GILLIS, Ottawa Sun
WEARING FLOWING white robes, the nine will board a boat and set sail for the middle of the St. Lawrence.
On the water, as the late afternoon sun turns golden, two bishops will ask them if they are ready for the sacrament of ordination. They’ll answer and prostrate themselves on the boat’s deck as the Litany of the Saints is chanted.
The bishops will silently lay hands on them, anoint them with oil and place red stoles around their necks.
Then they’ll celebrate mass, going among hundreds of friends to deliver wine and fresh-baked bread.
But according to the Roman Catholic Church, these aren’t priests and deacons but renegades.
. . . .
But activists say there’s growing support for the idea. A National Post poll before Pope John Paul II’s 2002 visit to Toronto found 8-in-10 Canadian Catholics favour female priests.
. . . .
“I would count on all of you to refrain from offering any public statements, or public prayers – for or against – in connection with it, as this gathering is taking place completely outside the realm of our faith,” Gervais wrote.
The archbishop counselled silence because there’s nothing to talk about, said Father Bob Bedard of St. Mary’s Parish, the founder of the Companions of the Cross.
“It’s not a question,” he said. “Why would we want to waste time talking about something that can’t change?”
. . . .
“What keeps me there is the richness of the liturgy, the beauty of the scriptures and the desire to come to understand and learn,” Dewar said. “I feel very strongly that it’s our church. We’re all people of God.”
. . . .
Dr. Carolyn Sharp, a theologian at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, compares denying ordination to women to apartheid and argues its basis is no more logical. . . .
Full article
By MEGAN GILLIS, Ottawa Sun
WEARING FLOWING white robes, the nine will board a boat and set sail for the middle of the St. Lawrence.
On the water, as the late afternoon sun turns golden, two bishops will ask them if they are ready for the sacrament of ordination. They’ll answer and prostrate themselves on the boat’s deck as the Litany of the Saints is chanted.
The bishops will silently lay hands on them, anoint them with oil and place red stoles around their necks.
Then they’ll celebrate mass, going among hundreds of friends to deliver wine and fresh-baked bread.
But according to the Roman Catholic Church, these aren’t priests and deacons but renegades.
. . . .
But activists say there’s growing support for the idea. A National Post poll before Pope John Paul II’s 2002 visit to Toronto found 8-in-10 Canadian Catholics favour female priests.
. . . .
“I would count on all of you to refrain from offering any public statements, or public prayers – for or against – in connection with it, as this gathering is taking place completely outside the realm of our faith,” Gervais wrote.
The archbishop counselled silence because there’s nothing to talk about, said Father Bob Bedard of St. Mary’s Parish, the founder of the Companions of the Cross.
“It’s not a question,” he said. “Why would we want to waste time talking about something that can’t change?”
. . . .
“What keeps me there is the richness of the liturgy, the beauty of the scriptures and the desire to come to understand and learn,” Dewar said. “I feel very strongly that it’s our church. We’re all people of God.”
. . . .
Dr. Carolyn Sharp, a theologian at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, compares denying ordination to women to apartheid and argues its basis is no more logical. . . .
Full article
